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Improved performance isn’t the only thing on Nathan’s plate, however. “We’re also taking some of the combat mechanics and taking them further in the next upgrade,” Nathan said. “There are some new modules, about twenty new ships, and around 400 new agent missions. Our focus right now is on Heat, which we introduced in Revelations 2. We’re doing another iteration of that and adding more strategic options to that component.” Heat is an issue that has been discussed thoroughly by EVE Online developers, but they’re hoping to bring even more players to use the strategic system by improving its functionality even more.

Improving performance in EVE is always one of the top priorities.

“Hacking is also being improved to be more interactive, rather than the static nature it’s in right now,” he continued. “We’re also looking at overhauling the new player experience again, and that’s something we’re constantly working on. There are usually about 10 people working on that all year long. On top of that, we want to bring the EVE experience out of game as well and provide tools for the corporations to give them a larger public face and allowing them better communication with their members.”

When Nathan brought up the outside game experience of EVE, what instantly jumped to my mind was a social “Web 2.0” type experience for the players; a kind of pseudo-social networking. I voiced my thoughts to Nathan, and he responded in kind. “That’s kind of the way we’re approaching things,” he said. “Our social ‘network’ is already there, it’s just providing more tools out-of-game. They’re already sharing all of their information with their confidants; we just want to provide them with a platform on which they can reach more people. Right now its only the big corps that have forums and that sort of thing, and we just want to help provide that to the smaller organizations.”

Of course, in expanding the role of communications and providing more support in the out-of-game experience, it’s a simple conclusion to determine that CCP|WW is going this direction because of the eventual expansion of alliances into the status of “empire”. According to Nathan, a lot of the improvements to communications have been made to further expand the level that people can communicate and begin to “know” each other. Hilmar Petursson, the CEO of CCP, also stepped in at this point to explain the company’s thoughts on the matter. “After 2,000 – 5,000 people have been incorporated into an alliance, it’s time to move to a larger institution of organization with different toolsets,” he said. “It has been a process of adding in the layers as the game has grown. I think we’re now almost to that point.”

Eventually the developers hope to expand player organizations into the 10s of thousands..

“An Empire is really an organization of multiple alliances,” Nathan continued. “The optimal size for an alliance seems to be around 1500 people. Corporations are at 150 people. Now we’re adding in another level to raise the number of people above 10,000. There’s a lot of space out there for people to claim.” While the thought of controlling an Empire is almost to heady to even imagine, I wondered if the developers were waiting for a certain number of players to join the game before Empires would be introduced into the game. “No, so far the alliances seem to be covering our need,” Nathan said. “If there ever was a time that an Empire could emerge, that’d be a pivotal moment in our game. Right now we have four NPC empires – if we could get a fifth player run Empire it’d certainly change the game.”

Along similar lines as the Empire is the burgeoning idea of factional warfare and how the EVE developers are going to introduce it to the players. Although Nathan couldn’t talk about everything, he could point out the difficulties in introducing factional warfare and what their goals are for the system. “We’re trying to build the framework, structure, and goals for people that don’t want to be a part of the larger alliance gameplay,” Nathan said. “It’s hard to find the right sort of balance between exerting control and using free-form, because you don’t want to hurt any of the player groups by having their members go join this factional warfare combat. We want this system to sort of introduce players to this larger PvP experience and give players that spark to go off and do their own thing with their friends. We’re moving it back simply because it’s a big risk and players want increased client performance and stability before we introduce even more hurdles for the overall performance.”

This concludes the end of Part One of Ten Ton Hammer’s interview with Nathan Richardsson! To continue on to Part Two, simply click here!

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